Ever a beacon of something-or-other for people who’ve given up on this generation of musicians, this Seattle neo-prog-rock troupe has quietly made a home for itself in the top 50 Billboard rock LP charts. Its main strength is guitarist/singer Jake Snider, who’s been blessed with the sort of artistic carte blanche that allows him to add weird noisy things to the band’s not-very-hooky song structures, making him part Eddie van Halen, Nels Cline and even John McLaughlin when in look-at-me mode. He’s earned the right to be a rock star, absolutely, even if it’d be cooler to see him with one or two guys who are a little unhinged — Cole Alexander of Black Lips, maybe, someone like that. But as is, MtB is a fantastic band, making whiz-bang sound-pyrotechnics relevant to the Kardashian millennium. The most powerful tunes are always at the No. 3 spot on the tracklist, and here it’s “Broken China,” where Snider wrings some drunken-midget sounds out of his guitar, although the loops on “The Lucky Ones” ain’t hay either. “Patiently Waiting” is the first sign I’ve heard that these guys really do desire a paycheck, what with its mumbled, uneventful bedroom soul. But they do deserve to eat, so there. A— Eric W. Saeger